Side by side

PgBouncer vs PgCat

Both stand on database proxy software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

PgBouncer

Free plan LinuxSelf-hostedWindows

PgBouncer focuses on reusing PostgreSQL connections and offers three pooling modes. It does not handle internal multi-host load balancing or failover, so those needs require other approaches.

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Choose PgCat if you need a free, MIT-licensed PostgreSQL pooler for self-hosted Linux, with pooling, read balancing, and failover. Look elsewhere if your transaction-mode workload depends on prepared statements, SET, or advisory locks, or if you need sharding or mirroring as stable features.

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The facts

	PgBouncer	PgCat
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	Linux, Self-hosted, Windows	Linux, Self-hosted
Lowest paid plan	Free or on request	Free or on request
Plans published	1	1
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	pgbouncer.org	github.com
On database proxy software	#13 of 31	#17 of 31

PgBouncer: what it does well

Free source release for self-hosted use.
Offers session, transaction, and statement pooling.
Supports several documented authentication methods.
Can route to databases on different hosts.

What to know first

Statement pooling disallows multi-statement transactions.
No internal multi-host load balancing configuration.
No internal failover-host configuration or detection.
Windows builds require MinGW.

PgCat: what it does well

Stable transaction and session pooling
Balances read queries across replicas and the primary
Health checks reroute queries away from broken replicas
Statistics are available through admin databases and Prometheus
Supports SSL/TLS, MD5, and SCRAM-SHA-256

What to know first

Sharding and mirroring capabilities are experimental
Transaction mode does not support prepared statements, SET, or advisory locks

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